Field of the Disclosure
Certain aspects of the present disclosure generally relate to wireless communications and, more particularly, to uplink data channel design for narrowband devices.
Description of Related Art
Wireless communication systems are widely deployed to provide various types of communication content such as voice, data, and so on. These systems may be multiple-access systems capable of supporting communication with multiple users by sharing the available system resources (e.g., bandwidth and transmit power). Examples of such multiple-access systems include code division multiple access (CDMA) systems, time division multiple access (TDMA) systems, frequency division multiple access (FDMA) systems, 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Long Term Evolution (LTE)/LTE-Advanced systems and orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) systems.
Generally, a wireless multiple-access communication system can simultaneously support communication for multiple wireless terminals. Each terminal communicates with one or more base stations via transmissions on the forward and reverse links. The forward link (or downlink) refers to the communication link from the base stations to the terminals, and the reverse link (or uplink) refers to the communication link from the terminals to the base stations. This communication link may be established via a single-input single-output, multiple-input single-output or a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system.
A wireless communication network may include a number of base stations that can support communication for a number of wireless devices. Wireless devices may include user equipments (UEs). Some UEs may be considered machine-type communication (MTC) UEs, which may communicate with a base station, another remote device, or some other entity. MTC UEs may include UEs that are capable of MTC communications with MTC servers and/or other MTC devices through Public Land Mobile Networks (PLMN), for example.
Wireless devices may communicate using relative narrowband regions of system bandwidth, such as narrowband internet of things (NB-IoT) devices. Certain NB-IoT devices may be considered MTC devices. To reduce the complexity of UEs, NB-IoT may allow for deployments utilizing a reduced bandwidth, as compared to for example, a wideband LTE channel. A new frame structure may be used for such devices allowing for increased compatibility along with greater capacity.